Allison Arieff in her blog for the New York Times writes “For a long time now I’ve been obsessed with suburban and exurban master-planned communities and how to make them better. But as the economy and the mortgage crisis just seem to get worse, and gas prices continue to plunge, the issues around housing have changed dramatically. The problem now isn’t really how to better design homes and communities, but rather what are we going to do with all the homes and communities we’re left with.”

MarketWatch reports “AECOM a leading provider of professional technical and management support services for government and commercial clients around the world, today announced that it has been awarded a $147-million contract to provide program-management services to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) for Phase II of its Central Subway project. AECOM will perform the work as part of a joint venture with EPC Consultants.”

Blair Kamin from Chicago Tribune starts a conversation “This could be a smashing year for Chicago, but not only for the reasons — including Barack Obama’s inauguration — that probably come to mind. Specifically, 2009 could make a historic mark because it will give the residents of Chicago and its vast metropolitan area a chance to start a civic conversation about how we live, how we grow and whether the mass suburban sprawl of the last few decades still makes sense in the era of declining fossil fuel supplies and global warming.”

Shanghai Daily reports “Wu Zhiqiang, the chief planner of Expo Shanghai, is an ardent fan who sees both sides of the emerging city, which is just as well as the decisions he has made will have a major bearing on how it is perceived long into the future.

“Shanghai is an adult with a juvenile skeleton,” said Wu, who leads the College of Architecture and Urban Planning of Tongji University.”

Undeterred by a battered public image and a recession that might dampen fundraising for his library, President George W. Bush said Thursday that he hasn’t considered scaling back the multimillion-dollar project at SMU.

“I don’t think popularity ratings have anything to do with whether people want to support a good idea,” he said.